Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands eBook

’And indeed I feel now with regard to you, my
dear Father, that I have not learned to know you better
while I was with you than I do now. I think
that in some ways I enter more almost into your mind
and thought, or that I fancy I do so: just as
the present possession of anything so often prevents
our really taking pains to learn all about it.
We rest content with the superficial knowledge of
that which is most easily perceived and recognised
in it....

’I think I know from your letters, and from
the fact of my absence from you making me think more
about you, as much about you as those present.
I very much enjoy a letter from Joan, which gives
me a kind of tableau vivant of you all. That
helps me to realize the home life; so do the photographs,
they help in the same way. But your letters,
and the fact that I think so much about them, and about
you, are my real helps.’

The voyage ended on the 7th of December. It
was the last made under the guidance of the Bishop
of New Zealand, and, alas! the last return of the
first ‘Southern Cross.’

CHAPTER IX.

Motaandst. Andrew’scollege,
Kohimarama. 1859-1862.

With the year 1860 a new period, and one far more
responsible and eventful, began. After working
for four years under Bishop Selwyn’s superintendence,
Coleridge Patteson was gradually passing into a sphere
of more independent action; and, though his loyal allegiance
to his Primate was even more of the heart than of the
letter, his time of training was over; he was left
to act more on his own judgment; and things were ripening
for his becoming himself a Bishop. He had nearly
completed his thirty-third year, and was in his fullest
strength, mental and bodily; and, as has been seen,
the idea had already through Bishop Selwyn’s
letters become familiar to his family, though he himself
had shrunk from entertaining it.

The first great change regarded the locality of the
Melanesian school in New Zealand. Repeated experience
had shown that St. John’s College was too bleak
for creatures used to basking under a vertical sun,
and it had been decided to remove to the sheltered
landing-place at Kohimarama, where buildings for the
purpose had been commenced so as to be habitable in
time for the freight of 1859.

It should be explained, that the current expenses
of the Mission had been defrayed by the Eton and Sydney
associations, with chance help from persons privately
interested, together with a grant of £200, and afterwards
£300 per annum from the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel. The extra expense of this foundation
was opportunely met by a discovery on the part of
Sir John Patteson, that his eldest son, living upon
the Merton Fellowship, had cost him £200 a year less
than his younger son, and therefore that, in his opinion,
£800 was due to Coleridge. Moreover, the earlier
voyages, and, in especial the characters of Siapo
and Umao, had been so suggestive of incidents fabricated
in the ‘Daisy Chain,’ that the proceeds
of the book were felt to be the due of the Mission
and at this time these had grown to such an amount
as to make up the sum needful for erecting such buildings
as were immediately requisite for the intended College.